The Will Of Time
by pardum
Summary: Its been years since the Fourth Shinobi World War and people had started to call it the beginning of a golden age. everyone is happy, so why did Sakura wake up back before she had even become genin? Sakura certainly doesn't know but her dad had always told her "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade". AU - Time Travel - Strong!Sakura -


_**-Memories in this font-**_

Mind speak in these fonts:

_Young Sakura- :Hello!: _

_**Cannon Sakura- :Hello!:**_

**Inner Sakura- :Hello!: **

_-Flashbacks In This Font-_

_**Date: September 3rd Time: 9:15 PM Location: Sakura Haruno' Room**_

Sakura Haruno knew she was smarter then the average seven (and a half!) year old, it was something she was very proud of.  
She also knew she was more logical then children her age, when she saw a situation that she didn't understand, she researched and put together all the facts until she understood.

Most of the time it was simple; why did her mother always go to the vendor across the village instead of the one down the street?

Because they had better quality food and was run by a women who had the best gossip in the village.

Simple.

Then there was the harder ones like why did the adults have a problem with Naruto?

There was only a small chance that it was because of his obnoxious personality or the pranks, a slightly bigger chance was that it had something to do with his parents and a pretty big chance that it had something to do with the Kyuubi, what with his birthday being on October 10th, the frequent hisses of demon whenever an adult saw him and the fact that he couldn't leave his home on October 10th without a mob forming.

She still had no idea how he was connected to the Kyuubi but she was almost positive that it was the reason the adults didn't like him.

The point was when she was confused she took the facts and came up with the most likely answer but now her logic could do nothing to help her because even with all the facts the most likely answer was not possible-

_**:Not impossible just improbable.:**_

She pinch the bridge of her nose trying to fight off a headache, as if having one split personality wasn't enough.

_**:How many times must I tell you I'm not just another personality.:**_

**:At least once more I suppose: **Inner Sakura deadpanned

Sakura sighed despairingly, when had her life become so complicated?

She almost wanted to be mad at the other personality-

_**:not just another per-:**_

_**:we get it!:**_

-for complicating her life but she had been more helpful then harmful since she had popped up out of the blue a few hours ago claiming to be from the future.

She had wondered how her split personality was more insane then her but the more she said the harder it was to disbelieve.

There was just to many things she shouldn't know, her mind went back to earlier that day when she had instructed Sakura in a chakra control exercise that let you layer chakra at the bottom of her feet so she could stick to the surface of a tree, that she had never heard before so how could a split personality someone who was essential her know.

_**:you will have to accept the fact that I'm telling the truth sooner or later: **_She said softly.

Sakura didn't want to accept it, she wanted to stick her head in the sand and hum loudly until she could ignore everything but almost against her will curiosity had started to grow.

If it was true then she could know how her life turned out...did she ever get married to Sasuke? Did they have children-

:_**Really? You finally admit-:**_

_:I have admitted nothing:_

_**:I'm from the future and the first thing you want to know is if you get married to sasuke.:**_

...

_**:No, we don't get married to Sasuke.:**_

and with that she stuck her head in the sand and began to hum.

_**Date: September 3rd -Time: 9:20 PM- Location: Sakura' Mindscape**_

There was a stunned silence and then

"What do you mean we don't get married to Sasuke!" Inner demanded hotly,

Sakura had put the facts together until only one explanation was left, She was in the mind of a 7 year old Sakura in an alternate dimension.

While she had been stunned it wasn't the craziest situation she had been in, fighting a man who believed he could create world peace by putting a genjustu on everyone on the planet with the help of the moon, was the first that came to mind.

So she had accepted it easier then she would have years ago, and she knew it was pointless to stay in denial when she could be doing other things.

But this Sakura hadn't been through the things she had so she had been expecting denial, but if she couldn't get mini Sakura to believe her then she would stay in her mindscape forever and that was not something she wanted and so she had explained the situation to Inner Sakura and mini Sakura when she had woken up.

She had gotten the expected denial so she had taught her the tree walking exercise, something mini Sakura had never even seen before let alone knew how to do, and she knew she had slowly convinced them that she was telling the truth, but what she hadn't expected was them being even more in denial about the fact that they didn't marry Sasuke then they were about the time travel.

"Of course we marry Sasuke! who else would we marry." Inner continued to rant, oblivious to the fact that sakura had stopped paying attention to her five minutes ago.

Finally sick of listening to it, Sakura put up a hand to stop Inner "I'm from a dimension where i don't get married to Sasuke, I never said that it would be the same here"

Sakura doubted they would marry Sasuke here either but she would say anything for Inner to shut up already, her high pitch voice was shrieking at her with no thought to Sakura's sensitive ear drums and looking at inner calming down she knew she had made the right choice.

She had been here for almost a whole day and she had plans she needed to put into action and she couldn't do that if they wouldn't listen to her, and if thinking they still had a shot at Sasuke would get them to help her well then she would say nothing against it...for now.

She just needed to get mini Sakura in here to talk with her because as much as she was used to weirdness talking to a voice that came from the sky was still something she couldn't get used to, but she knew she would have to wait until mini Sakura fell asleep to pull her into her mindscape so she decided to relax until then maybe even get some rest but even as she said that she knew it wouldn't be long before her mind would go back to when she had first arrived here confused and lost…

_**Date:Unknown Time: Unknown Location:Unknown **_

_Sakura Haruno liked to think she was a logical person, when she saw a situation she didn't understand she gathered Intel in the matter and formed conclusions._

_When she had woken in a unfamiliar space she hadn't moved a muscle she had continued acting like she was asleep while she assessed the situation._

_She was low on chakra in an unfamiliar, possibly hostile, environment with no back up and no idea on how she had got there._

_First she had to find out where she was,she could feel grass underneath her and hear the wind blowing through leaves and yet she could hear no animals, there where no birds chirping or toads croaking even though she could hear a small stream near by._

_With that little information she could already tell she wasn't in The Land of Earth, Wind or Rain._

_Even low on chakra she had enough to do a subtle scan of the area around her and she was pleased to see she was the only one around for a long while, finally she opened her eyes to observe her surroundings, like she had thought she was surrounded by trees but what she hadn't expected was the type of tree._

_She had been expecting to be in a different country and yet she was surrounded with the tall red wood trees only found in the fire country had she not been so paranoid she would have sighed in relief but why go to the trouble of taking her from out of her bed in Konoha just to keep her in Fire territory it made no sense, anyone who was good enough to move her without waking her and get out of Konoha with alerting anyone had to know that the disappearance of the Fifth Hokages apprentice and the team member of the Sixth Hokage would cause panic, so the question was what was the end game?_

_What would happen if a person important to the village disappeared even for just a few days, the answer came immediately, suspicion._

_Even after being Hokage for 6 years Naruto had not mellowed out a lot and finding her gone would cause him to channel his frustration to the easiest target, the other villages._

_She could see him suspecting Iwa first, even after all these years Konoha didn't have the best relationship with them, after that would be Mist and he would not be quiet with these accusations and they would waste no time in being offended. _

_It could ruin all the work they had done to keep the nations peaceful with each other._

_She couldn't let that happen they had come to far for everything to fall apart now,_

_With determination she hadn't felt sense the war, she jumped onto the nearest tree only to nearly fall as she was assaulted with memories_

_**Daddy I want to be a ninja**_  
_**of course sweetie**_

_a naive little girl begging her parents for a chance_

_**Absolutely not, I forbid it**_  
_**sweet heart at least hear her out**_  
_**no daughter of mine will become a ninja**_

_an overprotective mother filled with prejudice_

_**Don't worry sweetie she will come around**_  
_**you promise?**_  
_**I pinkie promise**_

_A caring father who just wanted his daughter to be happy_

_**She doesn't have a lot of chakra...**_  
_**will that make a difference?**_  
_**It might hinder her.**_

_No one really thought she would make past the first year_

_**Hey, Forehead!-**_

_Sakura gathered her strength and lept to the next tree_

_**Did you see it? Hokage-sama was carrying around the demon brat..**_  
_**well he is his adopted son-**_

_And the next _

_Every leap she wasted a little bit of chakra trying to get out of the genjutsu that she was obviously in but no matter how many times she tried to disrupt the flow of the chakra nothing changed._

_With a put out sigh she jumped off the tree and landed in a crouch on the ground, if the most obvious method wasn't working..._

_With a quick movement she bit her hand hard enough for blood to come out, she never had a need to use pain to get out of a genjutsu before but there was always a first for everything._

_When nothing changed she hesitantly pressed a finger to a trunk of tree._

_**Ino-chan, wait for me!**_

_Taking her finger away from the tree she sighed, this had to be one of the most complicated genjutsu she had ever been in, it was easy it make someone think they where in a specific place just put some trees and bushes and done, but this was so much more complicated, every time she touched a tree a memory would suck her in._

_Normally she would think that it was the jutsu going through her memories but there where inconsistencies, naruto while still being the kyuubi` container had been adopted by the Third,growing up being the big brother to konohamaru and never knowing what it was like to not have a family and from what she could tell the memories never went past the age of 6._

_If the purpose of the genjutsu was to confuse her they had done a good job._

_Well she supposed the only way to find out what they wanted was to just go along with it for now._

_She spent hours walking around the forest trailing her fingers across the trees, and it didn't take long before she became fascinated with watching her early life in a third person perspective._

_She was still confused because it was getting harder and harder to believe that this was just a genjutsu, nothing but the sharingan would be able to create a genjutsu this complicated and keep it up for this long __**and **__she thought with a pang of sorrow __**no Uchiha had survived the war. **_

_So the question was if she wasn't in a genjutsu where in the hell was she..._

_She had been surprised to realize one of the major differences in the memories was the civilians._

_At first she hadn't seen it and then little bits and pieces began to form a picture that she wasnt comfortable with._

_It had actually been quite a shock to see that the shinobi council had let civilians, __**Civilians**__, become a part of the shinobi council._

_The shinobi council had been made to help the hokage govern the village and to make sure the hokage was doing what was best for the village and for the shinobi in it._

_They helped pass laws and to go through trials for the shinobi._

_while the civilian council did basically the same only with the civilian part of the village but two thing stayed the same for both councils, in the end the decision was up to the hokage and the shinobi governed the shinobi and the civilians governed the civilians._

_For them to be put civilians on the shinobi council when they didn't even understand the life of a shinobi was ridiculous._

_How was a civilian supposed to understand that yes the man was still innocent because even if he had killed that civilian it was because the civilian had been selling information about the mans family to enemy nin._

_They wouldn't understand the situation and would always declare that the shinobi was the one in the wrong while the poor, weak and innocent civilian had done nothing wrong._

_That had been her first thought but she had decided maybe she would be wrong and the civilians would stay unbiased. so she had started to search harder in the trees to find memories of any kind of announcement's from the council._

_It had seemed innocent at first, the announcement that a law had been passed in the council that academy students would not be able to graduate until they were fourteen._

_Sure there had been a couple people who had been annoyed at the law but it had seemed like such a little thing to give to the civilians, of course they would want to wait till their children were older before they were sent out to the field. she could understand the clan heads not putting up much of a fight against their civilian counter parts when it came to this law._

_At first Sakura had seen nothing wrong with it, indeed it had seemed like something that they could make good use for with more time in the academy it was more time to train the children better, but as she went through the fake Sakuras memories of the academy she started to notice something strange, slowly but surely academy teachers began to quit it wasn't very noticeable if you weren't looking for it, and it took me a while realize what had made them so disgruntled as to quit,but as the new teachers came in and started teaching she realized that the shinobi council decides what to teach at the academy and with civilians now in the shinobi council they could choose what they wanted the kids to learn._

_**And apparently they wanted the kids to die on there first mission outside of the village **__she thought morbidly._

_From observing the older years through mini Sakuras eyes she realized by the time they finish the academy with the full 3 extra years they would probably have the same amount if less knowledge of when sakura herself had graduated,wasting the three years they could have spent learning under a jonin._

_She still didn't know why, but for some reason the civilians had decided to stick their noses where they didn't belong and she was going to do something abo-_

_Sakura blinked in surprise as she realized that some where along the way she had started to believe that this world she had been observing through the memories of a younger her was real._

_Sakura shook her head and pushing down her panic she jumped onto a tree ignoring the memories that sunk into her head she started to travel across the trees, she needed to get out of this forest, she needed to get back to naruto, get back to the real world, with the real problems, she needed to, she needed to_

_**Sakura take out the- did you see that boy his name is Sasu-i don't think you have a big fore-Fourth Hokage deafeted the Kyuubi-Rule number one-Hi my name's Naruto-Im Sakura- did you hear-the demon brat did it-the Uchiha heir, Itachi I th-**_

_It was all just to much, the memories bombarding her at every turn it didn't take long before her brain couldn't take it anymore and shut down and she past out mid leap._

_Later she would scold herself for letting her emotions get the better of her but end the end it all worked out because a seven year old pink haired split personality was the one to find her._

_**Date:September 3rd Time: 8:13 AM Location: Sakura Haruno' Mindscape**_

_Though Inner sakura would never admit it, she sometimes got lonely in Sakura's mind having only one person to talk to did that to you, it was worse when that person was determined to ignore you, so even if she would never admit it out loud she had been excited when she had noticed a new figure walking in the forest that was Sakura's mind, completely focused on whatever memory she was looking at._

_At first she had thought it was an intruder and she had been ready to kick some butt, and then she really looked at the woman and had almost fell out of her hiding place as she realized it looked like a grown up Sakura._

_Going through possible explanations left only one logical one, Sakura had developed another personality, one that took the shape of a older Sakura._

_It was enough to make her want to cackle with glee because she knew Sakura's reaction was going to be amusing, she had just about to jump down to introduce herself when she realized something was wrong, although she hardly payed attention to the lectures that Sakura had to endure in the academy somethings just stuck with her and she had always been fascinated with the lecture on reading the emotions of someone just by looking at their body language and she could see the panic written on other Sakura's face. _

_Hoping to calm her down she jumped out from behind a bush, only to be a moment to late as the other personality jumped onto the nearest tree and started leaping to another one._

_Inner Sakuras eyes widened she opened her mouth to yell out a warning because she knew all to well what happened when you went from tree to tree to fast while under stress but it was to late the memories had took their toll and other sakura passed out mid leap._

_**well she was going to have a huge headache when she wakes up **__was inners last thought before she went to put other Sakura some where more comfortable._

_**Date: September 3rd- Time: 11:50 PM- Location: Sakura' Mindscape **_

Outer Sakura had fallen asleep an hour ago and so future Sakura had pulled her to the mindscape it had taken a while to get outer sakura to stop exploring the forest that was her mind and they were only now sitting in a circle in a clearing to talk about what this new development meant for them.

Inner cleared her throat to get both Sakura's attention,

"I call this meeting to order." Inner said dramatically once she was sure she had everyones attention.

Ignoring the looks she was getting from both Sakura's she continued,

"I think it should be obvious what topic we should start our meeting on,"

when all she got were blank looks she sighed,

"Code names! we need code name's." she said as if it were obvious,

"There are now three Sakura's living in one mind, we cant all be called Sakura it would be too confusing."

When Outer Sakura opened her mouth Inner knew she was about to get screamed at for not being serious when surprisingly future Sakura spoke up before she could.

"Thats actually a good idea."

When Outer Sakura looked at her with a betrayed expression future Sakura gave her a small smile.

"It could be a good practice for when you would need to go undercover in a mission as a different person, this way you can practice answering without hesitation when someone talks to you with a different name"

Outer Sakura relaxed and nodded for her to go on.

Inner Sakura looked at future Sakura thankfully, she had not been looking forward to that screaming match.

"You know we can take it one step further and invent our own back stories for our pseudonym."

Both younger Sakura's looked at her curiously, hearing the unspoken question she cleared her throat slightly before continuing with a softer tone

"My name is Shiraishi Michiyo,i am twenty one years old, I am the daughter of a minor noble in a small town in wind country. My father has recently passed away leaving me to move to Konoha to live with my only living relative, my uncle Shiraishi Takumi.

my mother died when I was young and I had spent most of my childhood being raised by the few servents that we had, my favorite was Ishimaru Asuka who always made me hot chocolate when I was sad. I was trained in the art of tea making since I was young and hope to some day open a small tea house in Konoha."

Some time during the introduction Sakura had moved to sit on her knees and her hand clasped on her lap.

For one second both younger Sakura's really believed her and then future Sakura laughed and the spell was broken.

both younger Sakura's stared at her with awe before bombarding her with questions

'How did you do that?' 'Can you teach me to do it?' 'Did you really make that up on the spot?'

"No I didn't make it up on the spot, that was actually one of the pseudonym I used when I had to infiltrate a small town in grass."

If anything that just made them more impressed, Sakura rubbed the back of her neck embarrassed a habit she had picked up from Naruto.

"Lets see what you can come up with." She encouraged them.

Instead of the excitement she had expected they hesitated,

"Whats wrong?" Sakura asked with confusion.

"Yours was really good, what if.."

Sakura smiled as she understood

"We will go step by step alright."

They nodded relieved

"Alright lets start with a name."

"Kuroda Misaki" Inner decided,

A few seconds later Outer said,

"Nakamura Michiko"

The newly named Michiko and Misaki smiled as the lesson continued some how knowing that it wouldn't be the last.


End file.
